Tag: we know drama

This video is one of the best ad campaigns I’ve seen in a while! It gets the audience neck deep in the product, evokes and amazing emotional response and ends with a memorable bang. But its still missing something:

Although this campaign is catchy, it is really only GREAT for the people in the square. The video of this event is interesting, but once its over, then what? This campaign doesn’t lead to anything. There’s no call to action to see the TV shows and there is no attempt to make it viral with social media. The only thing you are left with is the hope that someone else will push the button! – A flash in the pan – So, here are 5 ways that you can improve your great campaigns:

1. Include a social element:
The resistance to doing this is that it may complicate the campaign, but honestly, its fairly easy. Create a micro-site for the campaign that includes other videos, social media share buttons and throw a clever hashtag on it. With this TNT campaign, they should have included the site URL and hashtag on the banner.

2. Gamify your campaign:
This doesn’t have to cost you a bunch of pretty pennies. For a relatively small amount of marketing dollars you could create a site that creates a similar emotional reaction as your live campaign that can be done, over and over again. With a little ingenuity, you can even increase the play time but adding randomization. For TNT, for example, they could create a micro-site that has a button and every time its click, random things happen on the screen. Silly, but easily hours of entertainment and potentially viral.

3. Integrate your campaign:
Take your one idea and chop it into multiple segments and tangents. Invest these tangents into other mediums like print, TV, radio, social, web, video, apps, etc. The TNT campaign only hit two, but by putting it out on multiple channels you minimize your risk and extend the reach. For instance, TNT could put a print ad out that has a big button on it, has the caption “What Pushes Your Buttons?” and leads them to the micro-site, or has a QR code that brings viewers to this video.

4. Include your consumer:
Extend the emotional response and get your “man on the street” action on. After this great show, someone should be running around interviewing the witnesses and THAT should be put on the web. By including your audience and part of the campaign, you have captured their excited and now invested them into the campaign. They will be more inclined to share it with friends and this also gives your brand more transparency.

5. Create a competition:
Using the above tactics it would be easy to create a contest around your campaign. Contests definitely need to be integrated these days and are a direct line to your consumer, so they will be involved. A contest in itself is also a game. For TNT, they could do a video contest of people explaining what they think should happen when the button is pushed. Then actually create that scenario, grant the winner a prize and push the video out.

I love great campaigns like this, but hate to see them stall because the agency wasn’t thinking big enough or allowed to act on the bigger ideas. The TNT campaign as it stands is more or less hyper local, especially since the above video isn’t getting as many views as they had hoped. Don’t smother your creative talent and make great campaign even greater!